Thursday, May 22, 2008

Little by little, the City of Kingston is becoming a model city. It wasn’t too long ago that our image was that of Old School “Good Ol’ Boys” Politics and Ethnic ties took priority over good sense.

With the recent past city wide protest of the “White Supremist” rally and the significant upgrade to our Human Rights Mission, we see signs of maturity.

Now, through unfortunate circumstances, we have implemented Sexual Harassment Classes and all city employees are ordered to take them. What transpired between city employees is unfortunate and until the case is settled, all parties involved have soul-searching to do.

Demonstrations in support of administrative action, are a good civic exercise and allows an emotional release for the public. The gathering at City Hall showed us there were issues of concern either real or imagined by our citizens regarding the speed of the investigations. I would remind everyone that this process is slow and of an intimate nature. Calling for resignations or firings at this stage is premature.

Regarding the classes, the Mayor said in the Freeman: "I do not believe this training has ever been offered by any administration in the past or that any type of training of his nature took place." I have to agree that we have not offered such classes, but there should be a degree of civil discourse in any workplace. Our hiring practices have changed significantly since Sottile took office.

The Mayor was quoted: “There are two sides to every story.” Again, even though Jim and I haven’t been speaking, I have to agree with this as well.

All of us have heard that the “fake breast” (I can’t believe I just wrote that) had been in the DPW offices since the mid 90s and the banter between the employees involved has escalated in the last year. So where does truth end and storytime begin? I don’t know and neither do you.

7 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Good to hear about the classes!

However, I have to question why investigations must take so long... particularly with all of our advanced technology and such...

Most lawyers - and probably a lot of citizens - are aware that sometimes complaints, criminal charges, civil cases and the like - lag their way - way too slow - through the system - and that sometimes this allows the statute (sp?) of limitation laws to run out (sometimes with intent?) --- making the whole effort --- on everyone's behalf --- null and void...

Mike,Saw a complimentary article about Jim Sottile and The Boys Home Renewal project in the Ulster County Press this week by Pat Rowe on pg.6.These are also things we need to see and hear, wouldn't you agree?

Our son works near Middletown coaching gymnastics and has been asked by a co-worker why he would ever choose to live in Kingston with all the bad press it seems to generate? Apparently the Middletown papers print and promote our negative side as we seem to do ourselves with the local press and media.

How could we ever expect economic growth, spreading this kind of image?

Don't we all, including myself, bare some responsibility for this? I'm well aware we don't live in Disneyworld, but I also know we're far from Peyton Place or downtown Bagdad.

Thanks for yours and many others efforts to improve our HOME town....smitty

Now that the city has had time to send out the street sweeper, cleaning crews and the parks have been attended to, the city looks good.The image problem with kingston is the overwhelming flow of negativity by some of the disgruntled citizenry who feel slighted by government in general.

The good old boy's knew the breast was there, not the woman who had cancer. She was upset at that. That all will be out when the woman take the men to court. They new and the woman in the office knew she did not know.